When I first found out I would be doing a three hour presentation for the Small Public Library Management Institute (SPLMI) on technology in libraries with Richard Kong and Toby Greenwalt, I thought two things. One: this is going to be awesome. Great friends. Great topic. We are going to rock this. And two: THREE HOURS?! OMG THAT IS SO LONG! HOW AM I GOING TO TALK THAT LONG?

And yes, I do think in all caps sometimes.

Yet as we prepared and started building our presentation, which we now lovingly refer to as The Beast, we all realized that the topic is so vast and three hours is probably going to go by in the blink of an eye.

This topic is no longer just a talk about website management. This encompasses soooooooo much more these days - from social networks and eBooks to digital media labs and makerspaces, we had a lot of ground to cover. So on Wednesday, our time went quickly and we decided to blog on the topics that we couldn't cover in the presentation.

If you follow along with the slides, I will be writing about building a tech friendly organization, which begins on slide #158.

How are you evaluating your use of technology in your library? (slide 159)

PLA created theEdge Initiative to help libraries with this problem. Currently in beta, this program will be launched by the end of the year - with 25 libraries in Illinois participating. Once you've gone through this self-assessment, you can identify strengths, opportunities for growth - and concrete metrics for sharing with other members of the community.

Learn by doing (slide 161)

When you give staff the time and permission to play and teach themselves new technology, it builds enthusiasm for new projects. On slide #162, the Virtual Services Librarian, Cathleen Doyle, and I are playing around with Skype and podcasting software. After some playtime, we created the very first podcast for our library -an interview with the author Libby Fischer Hellman. You can also embed tech activities into each day. At Skokie Public Library, they do something called TechMunchies, where they use staff meeting time to teach other tech related lessons they have learned.

Experiential models, such as Learning 2.0, show that people learn best when given the opportunity to learn things on their own terms. Later this year, we will see a resurgence of this with Michael Stephens' MOOC project.

Learn from one another (slide 164)

If you check out the picture on slide #165, you can see an example of one librarian teaching another librarian at the ILA Video Shootout. Each year at the annual Illinois Library Association conference, librarians who are passionate about the value of digital video skills help other librarians shoot, edit, and then publish their own videos. It is fun for everyone involved and a wonderful example of how we can teach each other.

In a similar way, Northbrook Public Library implemented a Summer of Learning in 2012. Librarians and staff members who were passionate about certain types of technology taught classes on their favorite topics, such as Foursquare or Pinterest. By making it an event and finding people who are already truly excited about their topics, we were able to drive enthusiasm for learning about these technologies.

Make tech a part of your workflow (slide 166)

When you start using technology to help with everyday duties, your fluency and comfort level rises. Skokie Public Library uses a wiki to assist with their BookMatch readers' advisory service. This helps librarians keep track of previously suggested book titles and increases efficiency for future advisory services.

On slide #168, you can see Toby, Richard, and I collaborating on this presentation. As we continually failed to find a time when all three of our schedules would allow us to meet in person, we decided to meet online instead. Using Google Drive, we were able to meet remotely, often between the hours of 9pm and midnight - the only time all three of us were available - and worked collaboratively to build our presentation.

Support people's passions (slide 169)

Northbrook Public Library's social media committee is a strong example of embracing people's passions and then empowering people to act on those passions. The people running our Pinterest page are active, engaged Pinterest users, which makes our page much more successful than if we tried to push this responsibility on someone who isn't interested in the social network. We use this philosophy for all of our socialnetworks.

Support the creative and the functional alike (slide 171)

Skokie Public Library's Video Bootcamp is a great example of this. It gives people opportunities to tell the library's story - through its patrons, through its staff. It's the human factor that really allows this to come through.

Never stop learning (slide 171)

This is the simplest and most crucial slide of the presentation. It explains itself. Never stop learning. Never. The world of technology is a big, beautiful place. Jump in. Head first. We believe in you.

Thank you so much to everyone at SPLMI, the Illinois State Library, and of course, to the library directors in the audience. It was truly a pleasure.

Check out both Richard's and Toby's posts for more on this presentation.

Today at the library, we sent four librarians, including myself, to the Metra station to set up a table, and let people know about our eBook collections. We have started to realize that we spend a lot of time, a lot of money, and a whole lot of grief building up these collections, but do people really know they exist?

This is where outreach comes into play. I think you could probably argue that the majority of your community does NOT know that you have eBooks and yes, this includes the people that already have library cards. We helped over 57 people in just two hours. All of them had library cards already. Only 2 people knew that we had eBooks.

Never forget to get outside of the library. Just because you put up a sign, or add something to your newsletter, doesn't mean that you have done your job promoting. Here are the simple steps:

Determine where you want to go (coffee shops, commuter train stations, and grocery stores are all great options)

Contact the location and ask for permission

Determine who will go to the location, and what materials they will need (tables, chairs, eReaders, internet access, hand-outs, etc.)

Verify with your location 1 week and the day before you go

Go to location. Be happy. Be a rockstar. Promote the library and all the wonderful things you provide.

Keep stats, and report back to your library about all the lovely people you helped.

As my good friend and co-worker Gwyn Stupar would say, have a piece of cake. That was hard work! You earned it!